No Heaven Without You
by BaldiDaughterChevy
Summary: Tag to 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon. Dean has a panic attack. Sam talks him through it and clears a few things up. Brother fluff and mild angst.


**In my quest to rewatch the series I've made it to Dark Side of the Moon so far and that episode made me angry/sad for a whole lot of reasons.**

 **Obviously Dean pitching the amulet right in front of Sam is just plain cruel. That amulet represents so much between the brothers and I think that Dean's hopelessness was horribly on display in that scene, particularly his loss of faith in Sam. I think that loss of faith was a direct result of him seeing how Sam's idea of heaven never included him. And I just call bullshit. I refuse to believe that Sam's heaven wouldn't involve Dean in every aspect.**

 **This fic is just my own little fix/therapy for that episode.**

 **Also Dean has PTSD because he just got killed. again. and hurt Dean needing comforted by Sam is my favorite Dean.**

 **It's slightly angsty but I tried to make it humorous as well.**

 **There's some language and mentions of panic attacks/PTSD. Fair warning if that's triggering for any of you.**

 **Oh yeah, and guess what? I don't own Sam and Dean. Shocker.**

Dean watches the sky as he drives, speeding away from their most recent death scene.

The sunset that night is blood-red and thick purple-blue like a spreading bruise. The colors lay along the horizon while the sun drifts down to cast it's eye on another corner of the world, far away from Dean and Sam as they slip down the darkening road.

Sam's speaking beside him and Dean hears mentions of Cas and God and something about the amulet but he can't seem to focus on anything his brother is saying.

Flashes of the past 24 hours keep crowding out Dean's thoughts. He's seeing Sam get shot over and over again, watching his brother bleed out on the dirty sheets of a cheap motel bed.

Dean scrubs a hand across his face and tries to clear his mind but the road blurs in front of him.

He keeps seeing the gun pointed at his chest, hearing the echoing crack of the shotgun and feeling the buckshot as it rips through his organs.

He'd died. Worse still he'd let Sam die-and at the hands of some dumbass hunters with half a brain split between them.

There's a cold panic swelling up from deep down in Dean's stomach, it makes his muscles feel tight and his teeth want to chatter together.

That gnawing, phantom pain in Dean's gut grows so overwhelmingly that it feels like he's been shot all over again.

Even though he's changed into fresh clothes, when he looks down, he can still see the drying blood and tattered remains of his t-shirt and flannel. He paws at his abdomen, beneath his layers, feeling for bullet holes, but there's no fresh wounds on him, nothing but old, healed-over scars puckering his smooth flesh.

Without realizing it he's breathing heavily, taking small breaths that barely expand his chest.

"You ok, Dean?" Sam's looking at him, brows drawn together in concern.

Dean just nods, silently, eyes fixed resolutely forward.

"I can drive if you need me to, man." Sam says.

Dean shakes his head, still not speaking, and tries to take a deeper breath. The damn air isn't cooperating, it's stubbornly refusing to fill his aching lungs. He's trying not to gasp but the world is spinning and it's getting harder and harder to breath.

Tremors rack Dean's form, it's like he's freezing to death but he feels hot and flushed and almost feverish. The world swims a bit and the Impala swerves left-of-center beneath his unsteady hands.

"Stop the car, Dean. Dean!" Sam is shouting at him "Pull over!"

And Dean finally pulls the off onto the side of the road, puts the car in park with a hand that's shaking so hard he can barely manage the motion, and turns the key off.

He's choking hard now, despite his attempts to quiet down, and Sam is sitting beside him looking like he's about to break down too.

"Dean, what's wrong?! Are you hurt?!" Sam reaches across the seat, trying to get a better look at him but Dean pulls away.

" F-fine. J-just, just s-stay here." Dean gasps out the words then flings open the door of the Impala with a creak and a stuttered curse and takes off down the road before Sam can stop him.

There's a copse of trees ahead and Dean makes it into the cover of the woods, away from the eyes of his brother, before he collapses to his knees.

Everything is fading out of focus and his vision is swimming, he feels like he's about to pass out and thinks he would welcome a moment of unconsciousness, if only to get him away from this overwhelming, irrational bout of terror, but he remains awake, like his body refuses to give him even that much relief. There really is no rest for the weary.

Dean holds his head in his hands and rocks back and forth, trying to slow down his breathing and will his heart to stop hammering in his chest.

He hates every wasted moment of this.

It's possibly the most ridiculous thing he's ever experienced. It makes no sense. No one is holding a gun to his head anymore, and even if they were, that's nothing new to Dean. He's had one too many guns, knives, teeth and claws brandished at him in his lifetime. That's just another day on the job, as common to him as his favorite flannel; a ritual part of his life like bad booze and good sex.

And now, two deadbeat, asshole hunters get the drop on them and he's gonna flake? Uh uh. No way. Dean Winchester doesn't get kicked down that easily.

But even with all the 'give 'em hell' bravado in the world, even with his father's words about 'being a man' and 'the duty of a soldier', he can't seem to convince his body to stop reacting.

It's a visceral, tangible terror, the kind of fear he hasn't felt since he was in hell, the kind of fear that leaves men twitching in a mental hospital, a quivering, worthless, mess of nerves.

A crunching sound behind him lets him know he's not alone.

He doesn't have to turn around to know it's his moose of a brother come to crash his panic party. Kid can never just leave him the fuck alone.

Dean desperately wants to get ahold of himself, he won't let Sam see him like this, see him losing his grip. Sam doesn't need to worry about Dean for god's sake, that's backwards. It's always been Dean's job to worry, not Sam's and there's no sense in messing with the natural order at this point.

Why couldn't his brother just wait in the car? Why couldn't he just listen?

"Please...leave...Sam." Dean chokes out, each word followed by a sharp, painful inhalation. "I'll...b-be...f-fine in a...m-m-minute."

Sam doesn't leave and he doesn't come closer, he just stands silently behind Dean for awhile. Dean can feel Sam's eyes on him, can feel his voiceless concern oozing through the air like some kind of thick syrup.

For some reason it pisses him off. Dean thinks if he could manage to get his legs under him, he'd punch his little brother right in the jaw.

But he can't get up and this little episode has left him weak as a kitten so he just stays on his knees, panting and shaking and not saying anything else.

After a few moments, when Dean doesn't quiet down, Sam decides not to resist anymore.

He comes and sits down beside him, wrapping his arms around his long legs and staring deep into the trees. He doesn't touch him or say anything for a long time.

Dean thinks this panic should be wearing off by now. He wonders how long can his heart keep pounding like this before it bursts from the trauma?

"I had a thought." Sam speaks finally, by some miracle or force of will, his voice is quiet and calm.

"C-con- congratulations." Dean spits out past his chattering teeth.

"I don't think our time in heaven was entirely unaltered." Sam continues, unfazed by Dean's vitriol. "I think Zechariah tampered with our heaven."

Sam drifts into silence again but only for a few moments this time, then he continues, slowly and thoughtfully. "Because those memories weren't at all the happiest of my life."

Sam laughs a little to himself and Dean still isn't looking at his little brother, but he can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks again.

"Remember the time Dad won all that money playing pool against that sucker at the bar and we stayed at that really nice hotel for a night? Well, it wasn't 'really nice' I guess, it just didn't have hourly rates and HBO advertised on the halogen sign out front. But the beds had oh my god, the. Softest. Pillows. Remember that?" Sam sighs and doesn't wait for Dean to respond "and we had continental breakfast and I got a bagel and smeared it with all that cinnamon cream cheese..."

Dean's breathing has slowed down while Sam is speaking and although he's still trembling intermittently, he's smiling, almost laughing as Sammy recounts the story he's heard a million times.

"I forget what we were fighting about but..."

"Pink Floyd." Dean shakily interjects "You said Pink Floyd was the best rock band of the 70s. Obviously it's Led Zeppelin."

"Oh yeah, and you said I had the musical ear of a chimpanzee and dad yelled at us to stop fighting and then..." Sam breaks off laughing "I got you back. I still can't believe you fell for it!"

"Hey, I trusted you, Sammy!" Dean's actually smiling a bit now, and it's strained, but genuine. It looks so good that, even though they both know this story, Sam keeps going just for the pleasure of seeing his brother smile.

"It wasn't even the first time I'd done it and you still leaned right over to smell the cinnamon swirl cream cheese on that bagel." Sam is laughing so hard he can barely finish. "I shoved that cream cheese so far up your nose you were blowing it out for 3 days."

"Yeah, yeah, fucking hilarious, Sammy." Dean scowls in mock anger but he's laughing in between his tremors now and Sam is wiping tears of laughter off his cheeks. Sam takes a deep breath and blows it out in a high-pitched sigh, still snickering a bit.

He sits back after awhile and he's looking right at Dean now.

"That's why heaven can't be like what we saw, Dean."

The mood shifts at those words and Dean still isn't meeting Sam's gaze, but his breathing has evened out, and he's just barely trembling.

"My happiest memories, I mean the ones I'll remember forever, always included you, Dean. I don't have a heaven without my big brother in it."

Dean nods beside Sam and he's still at last. A few minutes pass and there's some manly throat-clearing and a bit of sniffling that neither brother comments on-Dean assures himself that the tears on his cheeks are only tears of laughter as he swipes them away with the back of his hand.

"Let's get out of here, Sammy." Dean says, getting shakily to his feet at last. "That's enough trips down memory lane for one night and I'm starving."

"I saw a Waffle House a couple miles back." Sam remarks as casually as he can. "We can get some bagels. I betcha they have cinnamon swirl cream cheese if you wanna sniff."

Dean throws Sam a bitch face, then punches him in the arm so hard it knocks him off balance.

"Ow! God, Dean that actually hurt."

"Yeah, well that's what you get...Bitch."

"Whatever. Jerk."

~End

 **Well it's kinda short but writing it filled in the crack in my soul after watching that episode, so, hopefully, reading it did the same for some of you.**

 **Sam's prank on Dean is based on a true story. My brother fell for that trick more times than I can count and he will never live it down. One time in particular I got him really good. It's an event we forever refer to as the CCI (cream cheese incident).**

 **Thanks for reading as always! I love you guys more than I can say without sounding weird.**

 **Everyone who reviews gets a free unicorn.**

 **While supplies last. Offer valid only in approved states. Free unicorn voucher not redeemable on any other fantastic creatures or on days ending in 'y'.**


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